Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

Mediation is an art form, incorporating intuition, subtlety, and vision. Yet it is also a craft with transferable tools, definable tasks, and management challenges. The purpose of The Peacemaker's Toolkit series is to help mediators learn from one another by distilling from their hard-won experience useful lessons about the tools of their trade, the tasks they must perform, and the challenges they must overcome. Each handbook in the series addresses a particular facet of the work of mediating violent conflicts. Individually and collectively, these books should help mediators maintain a clear sense of strategic direction as they strive to help make peace.

The Peacemaker's Toolkit is a project of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), which for twenty-five years has supported the work of mediators through research, training, workshops, and publications designed to discover and disseminate the keys to effective mediation. The Institute — mandated by the U.S. Congress to help prevent, manage, and resolve international conflict through nonviolent means — has conceived of The Peacemaker's Toolkit as a way of combining its own accumulated expertise with that of other organizations active in the field of mediation. Most publications in the series are produced jointly by the Institute and a partner organization. All publications are carefully reviewed before publication by highly experienced mediators to ensure that the final product will be a useful and reliable resource for practitioners.

This handbook, the first in The Peacemaker's Toolkit series, offers an overview of the process of mediating interstate and intrastate conflicts. Each of its six chapters covers a different step in the process, identifying what needs to be done at that step and how best to accomplish it. The steps are numbered and reflect the order in which various tasks are often begun. It is important to note, however, that once begun, some steps may be ongoing, overlapping with and outlasting other, later steps. For example, conflict assessment, which launches the entire mediation process, will likely continue in some fashion throughout the process until a peace agreement is reached. The other five steps focus, in turn, on ensuring mediator readiness, determining and enhancing ripeness, managing negotiations between the parties to the conflict, encouraging and coordinating with Track-II endeavors, and constructing and implementing an agreement.

Managing the Mediation Process, it should be noted, views mediation from the perspective of a mediator involved in an official, or "Track-I," effort. Most steps of the process, however, would also apply to unofficial, "Track-II," efforts. Other books in The Peacemaker's Toolkit series will focus on Track-II efforts and explore in depth the relationship between tracks I and II.

Consolidating the practical wisdom of managing a mediation process into an easily digestible format, Managing the Mediation Process is designed to help mediators identify areas where they may need more research or preparation, as well as options and strategies relevant to the particular case on which they are working. Examples (in italics in the text) from past mediation efforts are provided to illustrate how various strategies have played out in practice and how various factors have facilitated or impeded the mediator's work. Whether used by a practitioner to initiate detailed planning or reviewed at the last minute on the flight to the negotiations, this handbook, like others in The Peacemaker's Toolkit series, is intended to be a practical and valuable resource for mediators.

Contents

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